Change
Gas prices are changing. The weather is changing. Our society is constantly changing. Everything is always changing. We as people hate change but, it is inevitable. As you grow older, you will grasp that change is a part of life and it is the key to growth and maturity. Socrates once stated, “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not fighting the old but building the new.” I am not the same person I was a year ago. In fact, I am not even the same person I was 6 months ago or even 3 months ago. As I reflect on my freshman year of college, I wanted to share 3 lessons that have made molded me into the person I am today...
1. Not everyone in your life is going to stay.
People will come in and out of your life but the impact and memories that are made will never be forgotten. Author Mandy Hale said, “Some people pass through our lives for a season to teach us a lesson that could never be learned if they had stayed.” I discovered that some friendships are not meant to last forever. Some come to test you, some come to teach you and some come to bring out the best of you, but not all are guaranteed to stay.
2. Step outside of your Comfort zone.
To grow as a person and experience life in ways you have not before, you must try to become more open minded and be okay with leaving your comfort zone. Allow yourself to be open to new adventures and wisdom that you were not open to before. Leaving your safe space with an open mind essentially allows the potential for lifelong improvement and maturation. Not every experience is going to be a success, sometimes it can end bad but, that is okay.
3. Do not be afraid of failure.
This is the hardest lesson, not just for me but, for anyone to grasp. I truly believe that everything happens for a reason and there is a lesson behind it all. Once you learn from your mistake, move on. “We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure,” the author John Gardner wrote in Self-Renewal. “It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure — all your life. It’s as simple as that.”
Take in every experience, whether good or bad, as a lesson and be optimistic about the situation. Moreover, there is no such thing as failure if you learned something out of the experience.
With all 3 lessons, I encountered during freshman year, they all tie in with the concept of change. You can either adapt and take it in or, you can try to resist it, but in the end, change is going to happen.
Love always,
--NKT
